Language Removal, Commodification and the Negotiation of Cultural Identity in Nagorno-Karabakh

Abstract

[from the editors' introduction] Muth’s (Chapter 4) analysis of the functional domains of the languages visible in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, illustrates the reorganization and the restructuring of space and the formation of a distinctively local identity in a post-Soviet nationalizing regime after the fall of Communism. Based on data drawn from a corpus of 500 signs, the study is contextualized against the backdrop of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which resulted in major demographic shifts and the drawing of new boundaries in a once physically borderless region. A disastrous outcome of the Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994), fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Soviet Azerbaijan, had been the removal of the Azeri population from the area. Muth sets out to trace remnants of an Azeri linguistic landscape in abandoned settlements throughout Nagorno-Karabakh to document patterns of language use in rural parts of the territory. His findings reveal that the cultural and linguistic landscapes of Nagorno-Karabakh reflect legacies of Soviet nation building, language policy and collapse, but also provide insights into the dynamics of interethnic relations, linguistic practices and the role of Russian as a language of wider communication, prestige and social mobility, contributing to Armenian-Russian bilingualism in Nagorno-Karabakh. Evident also are efforts to both physically and metaphorically construct local identity within the wider context of promoting Armenianness as the founding element of Nagorno-Karabakh. He concludes that the collective memories of the struggle of the Armenian people and the images of resilience and commitment to the homeland that characterize many of its key sites have evolved into an Armenian narrative of Nagorno-Karabakh and speak of specific visions of national identity within the context of post-Soviet nation-building.